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The End Of The Road For Linux 2.6 Looks Likely

05-23-2011, 11:00 PM

Phoronix: The End Of The Road For Linux 2.6 Looks Likely

It was just a few hours ago that we were the first news site to point out the message by Linus Torvalds on the kernel mailing list about his desire to end the Linux 2.6 kernel series and move future releases to the Linux 2.8 or even Linux 3.0 series. While efforts to change the Linux kernel versioning have been voiced in the past and ultimately failed, it looks like the effort this time around is building momentum and the change could very well happen...

Comment

Please make the development branch splitted. Kernel 3.x can drop supports for old stack/framework/structure/drivers and make code clean and robust. Those old stuffs can still get support from 2.6.40+.

old interfaces always get deprecated and removed in linux kernel.

there is nothing groundbreaking to justify a switch from 2.6 to 2.8 or whatever. i think somebody has a feeling of middle-age crisis and doesn't want to go over 40

naming the kernel by date would be pretty logical, but it would make it harder to figure out which release is official/stable and which is not. and it would confuse a lof of userspace scripts during transition.

Comment

Only internal interfaces, not userspace facing ones; those are pretty much set in stone from what I understand. That was one of the reasons Jerome Glisse had given for the proprietary drivers having an advantage over the free ones. They can change their interfaces as much as they want since the blobs bundle together the kernel module with userspace pieces.

Comment

there is nothing groundbreaking to justify a switch from 2.6 to 2.8 or whatever. i think somebody has a feeling of middle-age crisis and doesn't want to go over 40

I opened the article hoping to read about a new major feature, too. Like when the switch to 2.6 was made and the kernel received a much improved scheduler and such.
Without these, they may call it 6.6.6 or 31.33.7 for all I care.

Comment

Here! Here!
The rate at which they rip/replace major features is astounding
I haven't seen a stable kernel across all my systems since 2.6.32.
but keep those gfx driver updates coming!! ;-)
These version numbers are useless. might as well be integers or a calendar month.

I opened the article hoping to read about a new major feature, too. Like when the switch to 2.6 was made and the kernel received a much improved scheduler and such.
Without these, they may call it 6.6.6 or 31.33.7 for all I care.